Introducing English Linguistics

Table 2.1. Most widely spoken languages
# of First  
# of Second  
Language
Language Speakers* Language Speakers
Total 
Chinese (Mandarin)
873 (83%)
178 (17%)
1,051
English 340 
(25–40%)
500–1,000 
(60–75%)
840–1,340
Hindi 
370 (76%)
120 (24%)
490
Spanish 360 
(86%)
60 
(14%)
420
Russian 
167 (60%)
110 (40%)
277
Arabic (standard)
206 (90%)
24 (10%)
230
Portuguese
203 (95%)
10 (5%)
213
Bengali
207 (98%)
4 (2%)
211
Indonesian
23 (14%)
140 (86%)
163
Japanese
126 (99%)
1 (1%)
127
German
95 (77%)
28 (23%)
123
French
65 (57%)
50 (43%)
115
*Numbers are in millions

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of English in countries such as the United States or Canada who speak
English from birth but speakers of English pidgins and creoles. As a result,
he counts over 430 million speakers of English as a native language. A
pidgin
is a contact language. When slaves were brought to Jamaica, for
instance, many spoke different West African languages, and none spoke
English – the language of their slave masters. This resulted in the creation
of a pidgin, a second language that was based on the dominant language
spoken in Jamaica, English, and that enabled minimal communication
among slaves and their owners. When the children of the slaves learned
the pidgin as a first language, the pidgin became a creole that is now
referred to as Jamaican Creole. Creoles are typically quite variable, with
some forms close to the dominant language (English in Jamaica) and oth-
ers farther away from the dominant language and unintelligible with it.
This situation obviously complicates the task of accurately counting the
number of speakers of a language.
Crystal (2003: 68) also notes that there are many countries in which
English is spoken for which we have no information of numbers of
speakers, and in which English is spoken as a second or foreign lan-
guage. For instance, in Nigeria, a country with over 500 indigenous lan-
guages, English is a second language. It is not spoken as a native lan-
guage but has been legislated as an official language: the language of
government, law, education, and business. In Germany, in contrast,
English is a foreign language: it is commonly taught in schools, but it
has no official status. If the number of speakers of English includes
speakers of pidgins and creoles as well as speakers of English as a foreign
language, Crystal (2003: 69) estimates that roughly 1.5 billion people
speak English.
But even if estimates of English speakers are made rather conserva-
tively (as is the case in Table 2.1), English is the most widely spoken lan-
guage not just in the world but in the history of civilization. English is
widely used around the world – not just in countries in which it is a